Friday, July 29, 2011

(Part 1, Part 2; there are also the video in 2 parts with English subtitle, French text translation, and the video in 2 parts with German subtitle. Go to this post for the links.)

Testimony by Professor Tatsuhiko Kodama of Tokyo University continues. He goes back to Minami Soma City where his Radioisotope Center has been helping to decontaminate.

We at the Radioisotope Center of Tokyo University have been helping to decontaminate Minami-Soma City, sending about 4 people at a time and doing decontamination work for the length of 700km per week.

Again, what's happening to Minami-Soma clearly shows that 20 or 30 kilometer radius [from the nuke plant] doesn't make any sense at all. You have to measure in more detail like measuring each nursery school.

Right now, from the 20 to 30 kilometer radius area, 1,700 school children are put on the buses to go to school. Actually in Minami-Soma, the center of the city is located near the ocean, and 70% of the schools have relatively low level of radiation. Yet, children are forced to get on the school buses to go all the way to schools near Iitate-mura [where radiation is higher], spending 1 million yen everyday for the busing.

I strongly demand that this situation be terminated as soon as possible.

What's most problematic is the government's policy that they will compensate the residents for the moving cost only if their areas are designated as official evacuation zones. In a recent committee held at the House of Councilors [Upper House], President Shimizu of TEPCO and Mr. Kaieda, Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry answered that way. I ask you to separate the two immediately - compensation criteria issue and children's safety issue.

I strongly ask you to do whatever you can to protect the children.

Another thing is, what I strongly feel when I'm doing the decontamination work in Fukushima is that emergency decontamination and permanent decontamination should be dealt with separately.

We've been doing a lot of emergency decontamination work. For example, if you look at this diagram, you will notice that the bottom of this slide is where small children put their hands on. Every time the rain streams down the slide, more radioactive materials accumulate. There can be a difference in radiation level between the right side and the left side. If such difference occurs and if the average radiation of the slide is 1 microsievert, then one side can measure as high as 10 microsieverts. We should do more emergency decontamination work in such places.

The ground right under the roof gutter is also where children frequently put their hands on. If you use high pressure washer you can reduce the radiation level from 2 microsieverts to 0.5 microsievert.

However, it is extremely difficult to lower the level to less than 0.5microsievert, because everything is contaminated. Buildings, trees, whole areas. You can lower radiation dose of one place, but very difficult to do that for the whole area.

Then, how much will it cost when you seriously do the decontamination work? In case of "Itai-Itai Disease" caused by cadmium poisoning, to decontaminate half of cadmium-contaminated area of roughly 3,000 hectare, the government has spent 800 billion yen so far.

How much money will be needed if we have to decontaminate the area 1,000 times as big?

Finally, Professor Kodama has 4 demands, although probably due to the time constraint he was able to elaborate only three:

So, I'd like to make four urgent requests.

First, I request that the Japanese government, as a national policy, innovate the way to measure radiation of food, soil, and water, through using the Japan's state-of-the-art technology such as semiconductor imaging detectors. This is absolutely within Japan's current technological capability.

Second, I request that the government enact a new law as soon as possible in order to reduce children's radiation exposure. Right now, what I'm doing is all illegal.The current "Radiation Damage Prevention Law" specifies the amount of radiation and the types of radionuclides that each institution can handle. Now Tokyo University is mobilizing its workforce in its twenty-seven Radioisotope Centers to help decontaminate Minami-Soma City, but many of the centers don't have a permission to handle cesium. It's illegal to transport it by cars. However, we cannot leave highly radioactive materials to mothers and teachers there, so we put them all in drums and bring them back to Tokyo. To receive them is illegal. Everything is illegal.

The Diet is to blame for leaving such situations as they are. There are many institutions in Japan, such as Radioisotope Centers at national universities, which have germanium detectors and other state-of-the-art detectors. But how can we, as the nation, protect our children if these institutions' hands are tied? This is the result of the gross negligence by the Diet.

Third, I request that the government as a national policy mobilize technological power of the private sector in order to decontaminate the soil. There are many companies with expertise of radiation decontamination; chemical companies such as Toray and Kurita, decontamination companies such as Chiyoda Technol and Atox, andconstruction companies such as Takenaka Corporation. Please mobilize their power to create a decontamination research center in Fukushima as soon as possible.

It will take tens of trillions of yen to do the decontamination work. I'm gravely concerned that it might become public works project involving concessions. [In other words, business as usual in Japan where only the businesses and politicians benefit.]

We don't have the luxury to spare a single second considering the financial condition of the Japanese government. We must figure out how we really do the decontamination work.

What on earth is the Diet doing, when 70,000 people are forced out of their homes and wandering?

Thank you very very much for what your doing in this blog. I've been following it for a while, and it's being very useful. From Spain, we're trying to follow the news ever since 11 of March, and as my level of Japanese is so low, it's very useful to read your translation of Japanese news. Thank you.I myself try to translate them form English to Spanish, so it's helping a lot to keep us informed. Thans again.どうもありがとうございます。

Some of us has been thru this fallout senarios before.The sole reason for some of us anger is now begining to unrawel. I know its a absurd and unreal situation, we know, becasue we have been thru a similar expirience.The difference this time is the scale of it, this has dwarfed Tjenobyl already in the begining.

He is absolutly right, and I am afraid he is even holding back wurse things, becasue this is going to be wurse, the people of Japan is going to suffer, and for how long can WE help, I am also afraid all this sites will be senured away any time soon. And then People of Fukoshima and the Norher parts of Japan, you are on your won.You are already a black hole, where nothing is leaking to the MSM. Ther silence is to me just a confimation on their complisity to mass murder of their OWN people.

Japan, Wake up.You are only the begining to that catasrofy that wil be Global. Infact the rest of the world is dependent on your awakening, you are the frontline in this massive cowerup and criminal downplaying, you will lose if you dont react. That is the grim reality.and the Prof. knows it, and sees it.And the gov. and TEPCO, dont give a shitt.

You are on your own now, we cant do anything, we have tried. Nobody, nobody bothers to listen.

"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."— Martin Luther King Jr.

They run around the country with decontamination squads as if they are fighting a measles outbreak when in fact they are awash in fuel fleas that blow around and have now completely infected everything with their deadly plague.

Like this they assume they fool people. Maybe they fool themselves but not the larger world. TEPCO and government controlling the spin by looking proactive on a problem that is not solvable. This island is a wasteland, a heap of broken images.

Don't forget to put up a link on your front page when an english subbed version of Professor Tatsuhiko Kodama's speech is available.I'm sure Arnie Gundersen would love a copy, and many of my friends would like to watch it.

Thanks again for your great blog. Don't know what we'd do without you.

Thank you for translation. I thought his testimony should be known by all over the world. For his work and for people who suffer about this circumstance, enormous people's voice will make Japanese government move.

His efforts will not be in vain. So many people will read his agony. Look at us. We are not permitted even to own a geiger counter- its illegal!-India. Our atomic Energy Act is draconian. And they are going ahead with nukes. What a disaster of crimes! Hope things will change with such stories of difficulty of the downtrodden but precious lives. They must all realise it is suicide. Because the healthier way is to be safe than sorry.

the japs gov. n d tepco..... f...k them all, these people doesn`t care!!! heartless.... praying for their deaths... thanks for this BLOG and the translation... hope for the long run , this is very informative and really beneficial for us to what really the japs. gov. are doing and d tepoc tepco... Professor KODAMA ,,, you are the real hero.

Who'll stop the rain? I thought the rainy season ended about now I saw this article on ScoopIt the rainy season is busting a move. I guess Mr. Rain wants to go out with a bang.

"The Japan Meteorological Agency said some areas in Niigata and Fukushima prefectures saw precipitation of about 100 millimeters per hour and warned of continued torrential rain in the two prefectures through Saturday morning."

I don't think Dr. Kodama said "Thank you" at the end. He just says "That's all!" and storms off. Or perhaps "Thank you" is implied in "ijou desu"? The written transcript doesn't really get it across, does it? You really have to watch the video. Thanks for posting, and kudos to those people who did the English subtitles. I've cross-posted them on my blog.

"The technology will allow a command center in lower Manhattan to monitor 2,000 mobile radiation detectors carried by officers each day around the city. The detectors will send a wireless, real-time alert if there's a reading signaling a dirty bomb threat."

..

"But law enforcement considers dirty bombs a serious threat [not even in the U.S.] because they're easy to build and because of intelligence that foreign [domestic Japanese] terrorists want to use them against American cities [and their own cities in Japan, and they don't mind]."

Thank you for all of your reporting efforts on this horrible situation. It is very sad that government and the nuclear industry officials are in collusion on minimizing truthful and accurate information on this situation. At some point the political and financial futures of these fools must be set aside in support of the humanitarian crisis which is currently occurring.

About my coverage of Japan Earthquake of March 11

I am Japanese, and I not only read Japanese news sources for information on earthquake and the Fukushima Nuke Plant but also watch press conferences via the Internet when I can and summarize my findings, adding my observations.

About This Site

Well, this was, until March 11, 2011. Now it is taken over by the events in Japan, first earthquake and tsunami but quickly by the nuke reactor accident. It continues to be a one-person (me) blog, and I haven't even managed to update the sidebars after 5 months... Thanks for coming, spread the word.------------------This is an aggregator site of blogs coming out of SKF (double-short financials ETF) message board at Yahoo.

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